Part 15

That the sexual enlightenment of the child is an important problem and of far-reaching significance for its whole life is proved in numberless books and essays dealing with the subject. We are told that open scientific instruction should take the place of secret knowledge obtained from turbid channels. Very fine! But the world must not believe that the child’s first erotic knowledge is awakened as a result of such instruction. That is a widespread superstition. The sexual life of the child does not begin with puberty, the old books to the contrary notwithstanding, but with the day of its birth.

On the occasion of a sad criminal trial in which children were charged with being prostitutes, public opinion was horrified at the wickedness of these poor creatures. And yet most of them were victims of their environment. Does any one really believe that such occurrences are rare exceptions? That is a myth. We talk ourselves into the belief that the little child that is still unable to speak is not receptive to erotic impressions. How do we know this? The brain of a child is like a photographic plate that greedily catches impressions, independently of whether they are intelligible or not, impressions whose influence may be operative throughout its life. As we know, there is a large group of investigators which traces all perverse manifestations of the sexual impulses back to a fixation of the earliest erotic experience. Erotic stimulation can subsequently be brought about only by way of an association with this early impression. This explanation certainly does seem to fit the curious phenomenon known as fetichism. In this way children’s experiences influence their whole life. In sexual matters human beings behave with incredible naïveté. They close their eyes and will not see. Frank Wedekind is perfectly right in deriding a world that has secrets even from itself. So infantile sexuality is a secret which every intelligent person knows.

If parents only kept this in their mind’s eye! Then it would not happen that children ten years of age and older would be permitted to sleep in their parents’ bedrooms that the anxious father and mother might watch over the gentlest breath of their precious darlings. These parents do not want to consider the possibility that the children may in this way receive impressions which may prove very injurious to them. Many a case of obstinate insomnia in childhood or of nocturnal attacks of apprehension is explained in this way. I have repeatedly cured sleepless children by the simple remedy of ordering them to sleep in separate bedrooms.

Let us assume then that all children are susceptible to erotic stimuli and that such stimulation may harm them. For the later a person’s conscious sexual life begins the greater the prospects of his becoming a healthy, mentally well-balanced individual. Among the factors capable of permanently arousing erotic emotions we must include excessive affection. Between the affections of one who loves and of a mother there are really no differences. Both kiss, caress, fondle, hug, embrace, pet, etc. That the excitement is transmitted to the same central organs is obvious.

In this way the child receives its first erotic sensations from its nurse. Interpret it as we may the nurse, the attendant, the mother, the father are the child’s first love, the first erotic love, as our psychoanalysis has convincingly demonstrated. But this must not be interpreted to mean that I wish to condemn the affectionate management of children. On the contrary! A certain quantity of affection is, as a matter of fact, essential to the normal development of the individual. But the affection lavished on them must not be excessive. For if it is the child will be prematurely brought into a condition of erotic overstimulation. It grows older and begins to feel the power of education. To restrain and curb the force of the natural impulses powerful inhibitions are erected. As a reaction to the premature sexual stimulation there begins a remarkable process which may be designated as “sexual repression.” This repression may succeed so well that even the child forgets its early experiences or the repression does not succeed and the individual’s erotic requirements grow from year to year. In the latter case there develops in the child a serious psychic conflict between sexual longing and sexual renunciation and thus the soil in which a neurosis may grow is prepared. Perhaps the conflict is the neurosis.

We shall mention only in passing that such exaggerated affection begets in many children the habit of securing for themselves a certain amount of pleasurable sensations by way of certain auto-erotic actions. It is not possible, nor necessary, to enter into a detailed discussion of these matters here. For most people know that our experiences in childhood influence our whole life. But it is a tragic commentary on human strivings that excessive parental love may bring sickness upon the child, that a happy present is replaced by an unhappy future, that the roses a mother strews in her child’s path only later show their thorns.

We cannot say it too often: We fuss too much with our children. There is too much theory in this matter of bringing up children. We pay too much attention to our children. Let us leave them their peaceful childhood, their merry games, the wondrous product of their untiring phantasy. Let us clearly realize that with our excessive affection we give ourselves a great deal of pleasure but that at the same time we are doing the children a great injury. Let no one discourage mothers from being affectionate to their children, from expending loving attentions on them, from making their youth as pleasant as possible. But the parents’ affection should not expend itself mechanically. It should be a uniformly warm fire that only warms, kindles no fire, and bursts into a bright flame only on life’s great holidays.

WHY THEY QUARREL

When a happy married couple laughingly assures me that the heaven of their marriage was always cloudless and that there were no thunder-storms and no lightning flashes I accept it as self-evident, but to myself I think: they are lying. When two friends assure me that they have never quarrelled I think the same thing. I know that they have not been telling the truth. That is, they are liars without the consciousness of lying. They are firmly convinced that they were telling only what was true, because they have “repressed” the unpleasant, the painful, the objectionable. And thus it comes to pass that lovers forget all the “scenes” that had occurred between them, and that friends become oblivious of the little unpleasantnesses that had caused them so much suffering, and that they can assert, with the utmost conviction, that they had never quarrelled. We do not quaff the lethe-potion of oblivion at our life’s end. No, we sip it daily, and it is this that enables us to maintain that optimism which ever looks hopefully into the future and anticipates thornless roses.

There are people who must always be quarrelling, whose exuberant energy must be discharged in this way, to whom life does not seem worth while if it runs along smoothly. These are the everlastingly unsatisfied who have not found the ideals of their youth, who have not attained their dreams. They project their discontent, their internal distraction, upon all their daily experiences. That is why they so often appear to be overcharged with emotion; that is why the intensity of their excitement is incomprehensible to us. For it is a fact that they fly into rages about trivial matters. But it is this very intensity of emotion that shows that there is more behind these little rows than they will ordinarily admit, that the quarrel derives its fuel from a deeper source than appears on the surface.

It has struck many observers that the external provocation to quarrelling is often very trivial. Of course we frequently hear a man or his wife declare that they would gladly avoid a quarrel if it were possible to do so. Either one says something that seems to be quite innocent, and yet it will be the occasion for a heated altercation, a great domestic scene with all its unpleasant consequences.

This is due to the fact that most persons do not distinguish between cause and provocation. The provocation to a quarrel is easily found if hidden unconscious forces seek for it, if a deeper cause, acting as a driving power, sets the wheels of passion in motion.

A somewhat careful investigation of every quarrel easily brings the conviction that it is invariably the secret, unconscious emotions that bring about the conflict of opinions. Where this deep resonance of the unconscious is lacking we playfully pass over differences. Unfortunately there are probably no two human beings whose souls vibrate so harmoniously that there never occurs a discord. This phenomenon is altogether too deeply rooted in human nature for an exception ever to occur. And paradoxical as it may sound, it is lovers who love each other most who cause each other the greatest pain. The great intensity which their emotions attain is due only to the fact they have repressed a series of experiences and feelings. They are blind to the faults of the beloved because they do not wish to see these faults. But the suppressed forces have not yet lost their power over the soul. These bring about the quarrel, and are capable, even if only for a few seconds, to transform love into hatred.

But a few practical examples will do more to make this subject clear than all our theoretical explanations. Mr. N. S., a pious, upright man, asserts that his present ailment dates from a quarrel that had been frightfully upsetting him for months. He had inherited from his father a large library rich in manuscripts, and had also succeeded him in his position. One day his brother came to him and stormily demanded the return of the books. But inasmuch as he was the older he felt himself entitled to be the sole heir. A violent quarrel ensued, during which he exclaimed: “I’ll die before I give up any of these books!” After the quarrel he became very neurotic. He tortures himself with self-reproaches; he is convinced that with that exclamation he had been guilty of an act of impiety; he is very unhappy and finds no rest, no peace, either at home or in his office.

Many persons may be satisfied with the superficial explanation offered by the patient himself that he is an ardent bibliophile and collector of ancient manuscripts. But the physician who treats sick souls must not be so easily satisfied.

We know that every collector is an unconscious Don Juan who has transferred his passion from an erotic upon a non-erotic sphere. But we also know that the passion with which the collected objects are loved emanates from the erotic domain. And what did our psychoanalysis of the above case bring out? Remarkably enough a rivalry between the two brothers which went back all the way to their youth. The older one had the privileges of the first-born and was a good-for-nothing. The younger one was a pattern of what a child ought to be. From their childhood they had been rivals for the affection of their parents, and more especially of the mother. We encounter here the so-called “Oedipus motive,” a son’s love for his mother--a motive whose instinctive force and urge are still too imperfectly appreciated. The two had been rivals, the older one being jealous of the parents’ preference for the younger one, and the younger jealous of the older one’s privileges. In this we have the first of the deeper motives for the quarrel. Further investigation brought a second and a third motive to light. The older had, very naturally, married first, and repeatedly boasted in the presence of his younger and unmarried brother of his wife’s charms and virtues. In fact, he had even led him into his wife’s bedroom that he might see for himself what a treasure he possessed. (You see the motives of such stories as “Gyges and his Ring” and “King Candaules” occurring even nowadays.) At that moment a great passion for his sister-in-law flared up in the younger brother’s breast. Here we have then a second cause for dissension. But other factors are also involved. Our pious young man married a beautiful woman and would have been happy if he had not been the victim of a jealous passion. Jealousy always has its origin in the knowledge of one’s inferiority. He thought he noticed that his older brother was too devoted to his wife. And during an excursion into the country they had been in the woods a little too long, as he thought, and it occurred to him--and here we have the fourth motive--to tempt his sister-in-law. He is a Don Juan who runs after every petticoat and wants to drain life in large draughts. N. S. was a pious virtuous man who knew how to turn his sinful cravings to good account for the success of his business and to bad account as far as his health was concerned. The brother whom he despised openly he envied in secret. But we could mention still other motives for their quarrel if Mrs. Grundy considerations did not bar the way....

Unconscious sexual motives lurk behind many quarrels, one might almost say behind most quarrels. We have already hinted that dissensions between brothers or sisters are due to rivalry. But even in the quarrels between parents and children we may frequently enough demonstrate the identical undertone for the disharmony. The infant son sees in his father a rival for the mother’s favour. The reverse also occurs, though not so frequently. I was once the witness to a violent quarrel between a father and his son. The father had, as it seemed to me, not the slightest cause for grievance against the son, and yet a little trifle led to a violent altercation that ended in a tragic scene. At the height of the row the father screamed to his wife: “You are to blame for it all! You robbed me of my son’s love!”

Naturally one would think that this lava stream belched forth in a great burst of passion from a volcano would contain the truth in its torrid current. And so it does, but in a disguised form. The true reproach should have been directed at the son, and should have been: “You have robbed me of my wife’s love!”

We see in this a “transference” of a painful emotion from one person upon another. Such transferences or “displacements” are extremely common in everyday life, and it is only with their aid that we can account for the many domestic conflicts. A man will rarely admit that he erred in the choice of a wife. The feeling of hatred that his wife engenders in him he transfers upon others. Upon whom? The answer is obvious. Upon her next of kin. Most frequently upon her mother, the most immediate cause of her existence. This is the secret meaning of the many mother-in-law jokes, a never-failing and inexhaustible and perpetual theme for wits.

So that, for example, if we hear a young woman complain that she cannot bear her husband’s family but that she loves him beyond bounds we may with perfect safety translate this in the language of the unconscious thus: “I would not care a rap about my husband’s family if I did not have to love my husband.”

The rows with servants, well-known daily occurrences, become intelligible only if we know the law of transference. An unfaithful wife, who had been betrayed and deserted by her lover, suddenly began to watch her servant girls suspiciously, and to strike them on the slightest provocations. The woman had for years employed “help” without having had more than the customary quarrels with them. After a short sojourn with her husband the rage of the abandoned woman, who would have loved to give her faithless lover a good thrashing in true southern fashion, was transferred upon her servants. And exactly like this the resentment of many a housewife is discharged through these more or less innocent lightning rods, and thus is brought about the phenomenon so common in modern large cities which may be designated as “servant-girl neurosis.”

Obviously the deeper motives slumber in the unconscious, and if they ever become conscious they are looked upon as sinfulness and bad temper. Freud has become the founder of a wholly new psychology by virtue of his discovery of the laws of repression and of transference--a psychology which will be indispensable to the criminologist of the future. What is nowadays brought to light in our halls of justice as the psychological bases for conflicts is generally only superficial psychology.

This is strikingly illustrated by one of the saddest of legal proceedings of last year. I mean the trial for murder in the Murri-Boumartini case, in consequence of which an innocent victim--so I am convinced--the Countess Linda Boumartini is languishing in prison. Her brother Tullio, who had murdered his brother-in-law, was accused of an illicit relationship with his sister, for otherwise the murder would have been inexplicable. One who has carefully read Linda’s memoirs and her letters, which are now before the public, as well as the confessions of the imprisoned Tullio, will be sure to laugh at the accusation, which unquestionably owed its origin to a clerical plot. What may have really happened is that unconscious brotherly love which deep down under consciousness in all likelihood takes its origin from the sexual but whose flowers appear on the surface of consciousness as the loftiest manifestations of ethical feeling. It was brotherly love, the primal motive which Wagner immortalised in his “Valkyrie,” that forced the dagger into Tullio Murri’s hand. He saw his sister suffer and go to pieces because of the brutal stupidity of his brother-in-law. What lay hidden behind his pure fraternal love may never have entered his consciousness.

Oh, we unfortunates, doomed to eternal blindness! What we see of the motives of great conflicts is usually only the surface. Even in the case of the little domestic quarrels, the irritating frictions of everyday life, the vessel of knowledge sails only over the easily excited ripples. But what gives these waters their black aspect is the deep bed over which they lie. Down there, at the bottom of the sea which represents our soul, there ever abide ugly, deformed monsters--our instincts and desires--emanating from the beginnings of man’s history. When they bestir their coarse bodies the sea too trembles and is slightly set in motion. And we stupid human beings think it is the surface wind that has begot the waves.

LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

It was getting late. The last guests had left the café. The waiters, tired and sleepy, were prowling around our table with a peculiar expression in their countenances which clearly challenged us to call for our checks....

We took no notice of them. Or rather, we refused to take notice. The sudden death of one of our dearest friends had aroused something incomprehensible in us which made us very restless. We were speaking about premonitions, and that peculiar intangible awe which one feels in the presence of the incomprehensible, the supernatural, which at certain times overcomes even the most confirmed sceptic, sat at our table.

The journalist--who could not deny a slight tendency to mysticism--was of the opinion that he would certainly not die a natural death. That was all we could get him to say on the subject at this time. Finally however he confessed, with pretended indifference, that he has the certain premonition that he will one day be trampled to death by frightened horses.